An Open Letter to Chris Langan

Kevin Langdon

This package of issues and the associated material documents the early history of your involvement in the affairs of the Prometheus and Mega societies and the roots of the chaos that has ensued. My response includes documentation sufficiently complete that it speaks for itself.

When we first communicated about the state of the Mega Society I felt that we were kindred spirits. I was very surprised when you interpreted my remarks about keeping the flaky stuff out of Noesis as referring to you, as we were getting antirelativity rants, submissions from Paul Maxim, and long and meaningless tables at the time, as you well recall, having complained about it often enough. I happen not to believe in your theory, just as I don't believe what some of our members write about politics and religion, but I have always found your writings intriguing and I was quite prepared to publish them. Yet you were concerned enough about this, without ever asking me, to buy, as you put it, "expensive computer equipment" in order to "rescue" Noesis.

You will also recall that I was outraged that Chris Cole and Jeff Ward would try to make Mega members requalify in order to be in the merged Mega/[Titan/Noetic/etc.] society (assuming at first that Ron Hoeflin was behind it until I found out otherwise). What made you think that I was suddenly part of a conspiracy against you? I knew nothing of your "volunteering," so I'm "innocent" on that score; I put the word in quotes because you weren't, in fact, volunteering, you were delivering an ultimatum.

I am not convinced by what you have written about the CTMU. Neither are a lot of other people. That's a fact that you're just going to have to live with until you can convince the world otherwise. That doesn't mean you couldn't be right, but it does mean that you can't demand deference from others; people have a right to decide for themselves how much credence to give your ideas and to make their own assessments of whether your actions conform to their standards of honor.

I hope that you are able to publish your book, in one form or another, soon. When people have a chance to see the whole thing, organized the way you choose to organize it, it will be possible for a consensus to emerge regarding its worth.

As you can see, some of us are serious about preserving the Mega Society's control over its own affairs and the public use of its name. The road of legal confrontation is a rocky one. I urge you to accept to be an ordinary member of this community and to allow others to praise or scorn your contributions just as you are free to express your opinions about theirs. Why have you chosen to isolate yourself in a forum where your principal critic and other outspoken people are excluded?

Give up your claim to be "the Mega Society." Make your "Mega Foundation" over as a democratic organization (screw the tax consequences). Your contributions to this community are respected but your personal rancor when others' opinions of yourself and your productions does not match your own are outside civilized bounds. Don't fight us. Abandon the road of confrontation. Work with us. Together we can build something with the energy that goes into these endless disputes.